HOW-TO-BUY WOOF: A Quick Guide

This guide will cover how to go from USD to WOOF with pictures step-by-step. The aim of this guide will be to better help people who are new to the Solana DeFi space understand how to do the following:

1. How to move USD to a CEX (Central Exchange).
2. How to convert USD to SOL.
3. How to send SOL to a proper DeFi Solana wallet.
4. And lastly, how to convert SOL into WOOF using a DEX (DeFi Exchange).

So let’s get started!

Step One: How to move USD to a CEX (Central Exchange)

For the purposes of this guide, I will be using Kraken (https://www.kraken.com/) as my CEX of choice. However, other solid choices for the USD transfer and conversion steps are Coinbase, FTX, and Kucoin.

For Kraken, you must first set up a Kraken account here: https://www.kraken.com/sign-up. Please note that once set up, you will need to go through an identification process if you are in specific countries known as KYC (or Know Your Customer). Once your identity has been verified by your CEX provider, you should be good to login and begin your crypto journey.

Once signing into your account, you will need to transfer some money into your account in order to begin trading. In order to do this, most CEXs allow the following options: Wire Transfer and ACH transfer. Once you have set up your bank/payment method or wired funds to your Kraken account, you can now begin trading.

Step Two: How to convert USD to SOL

Once you have moved USD into your CEX account, you will need to first convert your USD to SOL (Solana) before sending it to a proper Solana DeFi wallet.

To do this in Kraken, you will first need to scroll to the top of the page and click “Buy Crypto.”

After doing this, click the new “Buy” button as shown below.

Once doing the above, enter the token name you would like to swap for and then click on the token name. In this case, Solana.

After clicking Solana, select the amount of money you would like to spend and click the “Review” button.

Then confirm your payment as shown below.

Congratulations! You have now purchased some Solana! 

Now let’s talk a little bit about how to transfer that Solana to a proper DeFi SOL wallet where you control your own crypto instead of the CEX.

Step Three: How to send SOL to a proper DeFi SOL Wallet

Now, before we move to this next step, you should first go ahead and set up an empty Solana wallet in order to prepare to receive your funds.

There are many Solana wallets you can choose from, but for the purposes of this guide I will be using Phantom wallet. In order to set up a Phantom wallet for the first time, please navigate to https://phantom.app/ and add the extension to Chrome. 

Upon first setup, you will be given a seedphrase.

‍Please note that the seedphrase is the key to your crypto! Please make a legible paper copy of your seedphrase, store it securely, and never give it to anyone else!

If you ever lose access to your wallet for any reason, your seedphrase can be used to recover your funds.

Once you have completed the initial setup of your wallet and the safe storing of your seedphrase, copy your wallet address by clicking the alphanumeric address at the top of the Phantom extension.

So, now that you’ve purchased some SOL in a CEX and set up your DeFi wallet, you should now be able to see the SOL in your CEX funds (as shown below):

From here, you can click on the up arrow which indicates the “Withdraw Crypto” action. After clicking this, you will be taken to a setup page for how you will send your crypto:

Proceed through the security steps of adding your new DeFi SOL wallet address to your Kraken account. After doing so, select your wallet from the drop down (refresh the page if needed), select the amount of SOL you would like to withdraw, and then select “Withdraw SOL.”

After completing the above steps, your SOL will go from an Initiated status, to a Pending status, to a Sending status, to a Success status (indicating your SOL has arrived in your new DeFI SOL wallet).

Step Four: How to convert SOL to WOOF using a DEX

Having completed the above steps, you’re almost through! Hang in there!

Now all that’s left to do is convert some of your SOL into WOOF. Please note that you should never convert ALL of your SOL, because you will always need a little bit for gas in order to complete swaps and transactions on the Solana chain (for reference, the current average cost of a transaction fee on the SOL network is $0.00107 per transaction).

So, let’s switch back over to your Phantom wallet where you should now see some SOL as shown below:

Now, having confirmed there is SOL in our DeFi wallet, let’s go ahead and connect our wallet to a reputable DEX (DeFI Exchange) in the Solana ecosystem. There are a number of reputable dexs, but for the purposes of this guide I’m going to be using our https://swap.woofsolana.io for its simple UI.

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In order to connect your wallet to Orca, first navigate to https://swap.woofsolana.io and click connect at the top left of the webpage.

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After successfully connecting, you should see a redacted version of your wallet address at the top right of the screen where the “Connect” button once was.

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Now that you are connected, navigate to “Exchange” and select SOL and WOOF as your trading pair.

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Then input the amount of SOL you would like to swap for WOOF.

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After completing the above steps, click “Exchange”. This will then prompt you to confirm the transaction in Phantom like so:

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Go ahead and click approve to initiate the transaction.

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(Notice how small the gas fees are! One of the many benefits of the Solana ecosystem!)

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After approving the transaction, you should receive a success message that looks like the following:

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And voila! You now have some WOOF!

If you would like to learn more about what WOOF has to offer, or if you’re interested in more educational crypto guides, please feel free to check out https://woofsolana.io!